USGS Quadrangle Topographic Maps

About the maps:
The United States Geological Survey publishes topographic maps of the entire united states.  These maps are often used as the basis for other commercial map products and they serve as one of the best tools available for navigating the country's wild and urban terrain.  The maps show contour lines (lines of equal elevation) which depict natural features of the land, as well as streams, roads, trails, forest types, buildings, and other natural and man-made features. The 7 1/2 minute quadrangle maps are published at a scale of 1:24,000.

Using USGS maps with MTB WNC's Trail Information:
In the Trailheads section of this site, under the Trail Information link for each Trailhead, I have included links to a USGS topo map of each trail, where possible, on topozone.com (a service of Maps a la carte, INC.).  This excellent web site provides free seamless, scanned images of USGS paper topo maps, which usually sell at 4 to 5 bucks apiece. To access a map, click on any underlined blue trail number in the tables. The number is the official Forest Service number for that trail. You will then be taken to the map on topozone, which will already be zoomed in on the trail you're looking for.

Important! Keep these things in mind when viewing the maps on topozone.com:

  • These maps are technical in nature. You should be familiar with reading a topographic map and the symbols used on them in order to make the best and safest use of them. If you don't know the maps' and your limitations, you can easily get yourself lost in the woods.

  • The maps are usually quite old, sometimes 20 and up to 40 years since the last editing. The USGS only updates maps frequently in areas where change is occurring rapidly (urban and developed areas). This means that what you see on the map isn't necessarily what you will find on the ground. Many trails, roads, buildings, clearcuts, etc. that are shown will have long since faded, and many that exist on the land may have come about long after the map was made. This is not a limitation of the web site (topozone.com), but a limitation of the maps that the government publishes!

  • When you click on the map, it may take some detective work to find the trail you are looking for.  A trail may not even be mapped, or it may have changed its route; also trails may be shown on the map that aren't actually on the ground. Trails usually aren't labeled on the map and none of the trails are numbered. This doesn't make the maps useless, but it means you do need to know what you are doing in order to use them.

  • You can usually spot a trail by looking for a land feature that it follows or is named after. For example, take a look at the map of the Fletcher Creek trail. Though the trail itself isn't actually labeled it is shown on the map, and it can be found by locating Fletcher Creek (the stream), which is labeled. The trail follows the creek. On the same map linked above, you can also locate the Spencer Branch and Middle Fork trails by finding the trails that follow the respectively named streams.

  • When creating the links, I tried to center the map on the trail and make the map a size that includes most of the trail's length. Sometimes, however, the trail is impossible to center and it may extend off the edges of the map. You may have to scroll around or enlarge the map view to include all of it; topozone.com makes it very easy to do this. You can be confident, however, that the map you see will show at least a part of the trail you're looking for--I have taken great care to make sure of this.

  • For an excellent map that takes care of almost all of the above problems with the USGS maps, purchase a Trails Illustrated Pisgah Ranger District map here. This map, which uses USGS maps as a base (so it is extremely accurate), is updated constantly and shows all trails in the Pisgah Ranger District. It even shows which trails are for mountain biking, hiking, and horseback riding! Though it's not free, it's worth what it costs (around $10), and this map is highly recommended for any extended stays in the area.

In summary, the maps on TopoZone are a tool that can be of great value when you know what you're doing, and they can save you large amounts of time and money since you don't have to go out and  purchase the printed versions.  However, any use of the maps is done at your own risk--neither I nor TopoZone claim any responsibility for what you do with them!